We Ride Forth

“Mograine.”

Sunset. Violet on the horizon. The chill of night settling in, mingling with the wisps of icy fog writhing around the necropolis.

“Mograine.”

The cold didn’t touch him. Cold could only bother the living.

“Highlord Mograine, what happened?”

Through the fog surrounding the floating fortress of Acherus, Darion Mograine could see the Broken Isles stretching out before him. The soothing lights of Suramar. The dead silhouette of the Tomb of Sargeras, its fel glow extinguished. The distant peak of Highmountain, snowcaps gleaming orange from the last rays of the sun. Still. Quiet. As it had been since the Legion’s defeat.

“Mograine, are you still with us?”

A blade pressed firmly into the back of his neck. A flick of a wrist, and his troubles would end. Darion Mograine turned his head and met the gaze of the woman holding the sword. “For the moment,” he answered.

“How can I be sure?” asked Sally Whitemane, her glowing eyes unblinking beneath her snow-white hair. An orc and a human were beside her. They made no move to intervene. Wise of them.

“Because,” Mograine said, “I am about to ask you to help me kill Bolvar Fordragon.”

The Presence in Mograine’s mind didn’t so much as twitch. That surprised him. But the reactions of the other three interested him more.

Thoras Trollbane grimaced and looked at the ground. Nazgrim muttered an orcish curse and spat on the floor. Whitemane just smiled and lowered her weapon. “Excellent. I wanted nothing more in life than to kill the Lich King,” she said.

“Droll as ever, Whitemane,” said Trollbane.

Mograine looked away. His gaze fell on the islands, and he granted himself one last look at a peaceful land. One last moment of serenity. Then he turned back, shutting it out of his mind, hardening the remnants of his soul against it.

Serenity would not serve him now.

“We need to speak. We Four Horsemen, alone,” Mograine said. He turned to the orc. “Nazgrim, if you please.”

The orc turned toward the crew of Acherus, growling like an Orgrimmar training sergeant. “Clear out. Clear out, now. If you make me tell you again, I’ll—”

The undead minions obediently began to shuffle away as Nazgrim herded them out. Those who still had the spark of wit had grown accustomed to the orc’s unique style of command. The rest—­the ones who were raised into undeath without their minds intact, the ones who would simply be a Scourge upon Azeroth without the Four Horsemen’s influence—obeyed without question, whether the commands were shouted, spoken, or simply impressed into their will.

Mograine let Nazgrim have his fun. There was a command table not far from the window. He unsheathed his blade—emblazoned with runes he would have found blasphemous in life—and set it down.

The others joined him at the table. So did Nazgrim, after a couple of minutes. The orc’s glowing eyes glittered with amusement. Undeath stripped certain parts away from every soul, but Nazgrim always seemed grateful he had kept his love of command. Understandable, for one who had died a general.

Silence settled upon the room. Though no being was close enough to the Four Horsemen to eavesdrop, it probably didn’t make them any safer. If Bolvar wanted to hear every word through his Presence in their minds, Mograine doubted they could stop him.

Blast it, Bolvar, why wouldn’t you explain yourself?

Mograine stared down at his blade, gathering his thoughts. “Did you sense anything from the Lich King today?” he asked. From the Presence, he meant. “Commands, idle emotions, anything?”

The other three exchanged glances. Trollbane answered first. “Nothing. Maybe a flicker of anger, and then nothing.”

Nazgrim and Whitemane agreed. Mograine closed his eyes. “What do you feel from him now?”

“Nothing,” said Whitemane.

“Try again,” Mograine said. “Try to feel anything from the Lich King. Seek out his mind.”

She gave him a curious glance, then closed her eyes. The others followed suit. A few moments passed as they concentrated. “Still nothing,” said Nazgrim.

“The same for all of you?” asked Mograine. The other two inclined their heads in affirmation. “Then I will tell you the truth. Bolvar did not answer any of my questions when I confronted him. I still have no idea why he’s isolated us. I still have no idea what he’s planning. I demanded answers from him, or at least a promise that he would continue to hold the power of the Helm at bay. He refused. So I”—Mograine hesitated—“I attacked him. Rather, I tried to. He took control of my will and forced me to return here. And he all but challenged us to face him together. He’s not the Bolvar we pledged to serve.”

Whitemane wasn’t smiling anymore. None of them were. Nazgrim narrowed his eyes. “He dominated your mind and then let you go?”

“Yes,” Mograine said.

“Why not destroy you right there?”

“I don’t know,” Mograine said honestly.

Nazgrim muttered something Mograine couldn’t catch.

Trollbane tapped one of his gauntleted fingers on the table. The metallic sound echoed through the hall. “Is it a trap?”

“I don’t know,” Mograine said.

“This is very strange, Mograine,” said Trollbane. “Bolvar knows we’re suspicious of him, and he knows we’re not easily intimidated. Now he’s confirmed our greatest fear: that he’ll snatch control of our minds if we cross him. He’s no fool. This feels deliberate.”

A sneer flashed across Whitemane’s face. “It’s a threat. ‘You’ll obey me, willingly or not.’”

“Perhaps,” Mograine said. “Or perhaps not.”

Nazgrim grumbled another curse. Mograine knew this would be hard for them to accept. They were the Four Horsemen, the most trusted lieutenants of the man holding back the tide of undeath. But none of the others had known Bolvar Fordragon as long as Mograine had. None of them had seen Bolvar’s prison of ice until they had been raised into undeath. None of them had searched for years, in this world and another, for a way to relieve Bolvar of his terrible duty. None of them had witnessed the stalwart and implacable spirit of Bolvar Fordragon eroding beneath the impossible might of the Helm’s corruption, wearing him down until Mograine could hear only the numb, toneless rasp of pain in his voice.

But almost as soon as the others were raised as the Four Horsemen, they’d shared Mograine’s concern: that Bolvar’s decision to use the power of the Lich King to fight the Legion—even if he had wielded only a fraction of the Helm’s true potential—might have opened a door that could never be closed.

“You were all stationed as Bolvar’s Horsemen because of your uncommon sense of duty and loyalty, yet I will ask you to commit the greatest sin of all: the sin of treachery. I ask you to kill Bolvar Fordragon, not because we understand what he’s doing but because we do not. I promised myself I would not allow him to become the monster he replaced, so I must act, even if I cannot succeed.” Mograine gestured toward the table, and to the blade upon it. “Bolvar proved to me today that I cannot resist his control. If you will join me, keep my sword. I cannot be trusted with it.”

Their verdict came without hesitation. “Take up your sword, Mograine,” said Trollbane. “We need you for the battle ahead.”

Nazgrim growled in agreement. “We knew this day might come. We’ll ride with you.”

Mograine looked at Whitemane. “And you?”

She just smiled.

Then it was settled. I wish I could do this alone. Death had robbed Mograine—had robbed them all—of the vibrant kaleidoscope of mortal emotions. They could not know love, joy, or anger like the living did. But Mograine had fought with these three Horsemen against the greatest threat Azeroth had ever faced. Through the crucible of combat, he had come to know and admire their stalwart spirits and their implacable hearts. By fate, duty, and perhaps simple chance, they had become the Four Horsemen of the Lich King.

They had suffered together, fought together, won together. It was a bond only soldiers could know.

And he was leading them to their ends. There was no question. Four people bound to the Lich King could never topple him.

But the others knew that too. And they had not hesitated to join him. Not for an instant.

A passage from his father’s libram rose to his mind: My brothers, my sisters, join me now in battle, join me now in victory, and we shall ride forth to the Light’s embrace together. Mograine wished he could spare them this hopeless mission. Because of their bond, he knew he would not. No matter what happened.

“Then rally the crew. Get Acherus underway,” said Mograine. “We ride to Northrend. We ride to Icecrown. We ride forth one last time.”

- - -

The Alliance had invaded Dazar’alor. They had killed the king of the Zandalari and retreated. The bodies of countless warriors, Alliance and Horde alike, lay in their streets.

“Bring me the corpses of those who died with honor,” commanded the Lich King.

So they had. Very carefully.

It was Horde territory, so Nazgrim had taken the lead, collecting stories of fallen heroes and selecting candidates. They had done everything possible to stay hidden from the loa of graves who resided there, for he would have been most displeased to learn they were poaching from his land. Nazgrim was not sure they had succeeded.

Then they had gone to Kul Tiras. Then Darkshore. Every major battlefield they could find. Some of the fallen had died confronting the dark horrors that emerged from the deep, while others fell fighting for their homelands. Some were collected by bribing the gravediggers and undertakers who were supposed to bury them, and the rest they had simply stolen from unguarded graves.

It was grim, disquieting work. Nazgrim eventually confronted Bolvar about it. “Better to let the dead rest among their homelands and the spirits of their ancestors,” the orc snarled.

The Lich King had not been swayed. “I claim them so others cannot.”

Others? Nazgrim had asked Mograine about that. Mograine hadn’t known for certain. “Bolvar has his eye on Sylvanas Windrunner,” the highlord speculated. “He distrusts her intentions.”

The idea of opposing Windrunner hadn’t bothered Nazgrim much. Sylvanas had helped kill him, after all. And she had never been his warchief.

The corpses had been brought to Icecrown, where they were carefully interred in the frigid storerooms beneath the citadel, where the cold would not let them decay.

It wasn’t until Windrunner had abdicated her command of the Horde that the Lich King began to raise them into undeath. One lifeless corpse after another began to twitch, shudder, and finally rise into their new existence of pain, torment, and power.

The Lich King had greeted these new death knights with a simple charge: “Death’s power grows. Rise, and become my champions.”

Nazgrim had expected to spend years training them to wield their new power, but almost all of them were sent back to their old homelands, forced to find their own way in a world that would fear and despise them. Nazgrim couldn’t imagine sending fresh recruits to war without trying to teach them how to survive. One day, he overheard Mograine challenging Bolvar about it.

“Even Arthas trained his new slaves,” Mograine said.

“I am not Arthas,” Bolvar said. “They are not slaves.”

“Precisely,” Mograine said. “We are cursed. We suffer every day. And the only comfort we can find is to inflict death and pain on the living. Without Arthas’s strict control,most would have run wild. Some of these souls will not last long out there, and they may hurt innocents before they fall.”

Bolvar’s answer was cold. “A necessary risk.”

But as the weeks passed, something else began to bother Nazgrim. It seemed that the Scourge was being drawn toward Icecrown Citadel. Even though death knights were being sent away, the ranks of the Scourge at Icecrown were increasing. Nazgrim first noticed a few stray undead hiding themselves by digging into snowdrifts and covering themselves up with fresh powder. Soon Nazgrim was gripping every pile of snow he saw—sometimes revealing nothing, other times revealing a pack of undead staring up at him.

These were the mindless undead. They would do this only if ordered to. When Nazgrim asked Bolvar about it, he was told, “It is not your concern.”